A World of Magic and Truth
by Cantharide
Summary: [English translation] A revenge, pondered twenty years. A puzzling likeness. A kidnapping. A stroke of bad luck, and here's Evelina de Chagny trapped in the ruins of an opera house, whose only inhabitant wants to marry her... Based on Leroux, ALW, and Mystery Legends (video game).
1. Prelude

**English foreword:**

Hi everyone! Here is my first attempt to translate one of my Phantom of the Opera fanfictions from French into English, following a request from Vivstar, who will hopefully be pleased to read another story about Mystery Legends. I already apologise for all the mistakes that could be found in this translation, and wish all my anglophone readers to enjoy the story !

Remark : I undertook the writing of Un Monde de magie et de vérité (french version of this story) two years ago, and I'm still writing it (despite the lack of updates last year). The first chapter was a sarcastic one, but I gave up this tone really quickly and adopted a much more serious one since the second chapter. So, I would recommend to try both of them before giving up/following the story, because a lot of things changed during the process of writing.

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**Translation of french original foreword:**

This story is based on Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical and on the videogame Mystery Legends : Phantom of the Opera, from BigFish Games (which I highly recommend). To ensure the comprehension of this story, I think it would be useful to sum up this game…

_Paris, circa 1900. Three people walk down an alley, coming back from the theater : count Raoul de Chagny, his wife Christine and their daughter, Evelina. While they are talking about the comedy they saw, a young boy deliver them a message : a sir asked him to deliver an invitation to the young damsel. When she opens the letter, she is all of a sudden transported into the ruins of an opera, and hears a man's voice announcing she'll stay there forever with him, if she manages to bring him five black roses hidden in the debris. She succeeds, and he brings her by force into his secret, underground domain. But there is an issue : overcome by his obsession, the Phantom of the Opera confused Evelina with her mother, Christine…_

* * *

« Let me go ! Let me go ! »

There was nothing she could do. The man kept running down the stairs, across the halls and through the walls. The issue : he was holding her wrist firmly, and didn't seem prone to let her go _at all_. Yet, he ran fast. Yet, she struggled with her dress. Yet, he was hurting her, while holding her hand. Yet, the runaway didn't seem to come to an end. Yet, she was tired of this adventure. Yet, above everything : it was a mistake. She had never met any angel of music, never had any singing lessons with a half-lunatic (euphemism) professor teaching her through mirrors in a dressing room… by the way, she never lived in an opera. It was the first time she came into this place, and, in case she could flee one day, she definitely won't come back again. Honestly ! Kidnapping young ladies like this, what a weird idea !

And now, he was helping her enter a barque. And he started acting like a gondolier. Evelina was shivering, without knowing if her shivers were from fear or laugh. Come on ! Did he think he were in Venice, with his raft on his ground water ? Would he sing in italian, too ? Well, no. He was telling her (just as a venetian Casanova could do) she'll be his, forever. In another scenery, with another man, in any other occasion, she would have been seduced. But seven floors underground, with a masked lunatic who enjoyed freaking her out during the last ten hours, when he sent her looking for his damned flowers (ô Baudelaire !) in every corner of his damned opera house, after snatching her… no, thanks.

« This can't be real… » simply sighed Evelina, answering his declaration. The truth was, she was completely overrun by the situation. Momentarily resigned not to understand a single thing, she decided to take advantage of this short moment to catch her breath. Around her, candles were showing up in the mist, which she contemplated with a risen eyebrow : what a curious ostentation, to receive a « guest » in a half-collapsed opera house, then dazzle her underground with dozens of candles. A better way to welcome anyone there would have been to replace some of the broken windows… Or move house. Simply.

The angel-gondolier with a mask and a black cape moored his boat and jumped out of it. He galantly offered her a hand… the same hand, which was holding her wrist so tight a moment ago. Evelina dedaigned it. Coming from anyone else, she would have accepted the offer, but coming from him, after everything she endured… no, thanks. Besides, she was perfectly able to jump out of a miserable boat, after all her misadventures (including climbing with a rope) ! So did she, with all the upset dignity an aristocrat could be capable of.

« Do you recognise the Lake House, Christine Daaé ? » asked the deep, dark voice of the masked man. Evelina looked him up and down. « Viscountess Evelina Marie Françoise Elisabeth de Chagny, Sir. As I previously stated, I am not who you think I am. » The Phantom hadn't said a word. Not even apologises. He could be thankful to wear a mask, to hide his reactions ! « May I ask who I am speaking to, Sir ? » Her tone wasn't softer than before. All those hours, dreaming of this confrontation ! All this venom to spit on him ! Ah ! No, she would never suffer of Stockholm Syndrome !

« Your Angel of Music. Aren't you pleased, miss viscountess Evelina Marie Françoise Elisabeth de Chagny ? » In his turn, he adopted a cutting tone, underlining ironically the lady's lengthy name. Under the mask, his jaw was nervously shivering. Viscoutess Evelina de Chagny. Christine's daughter. And her fop of a husband's daughter. Oh, he wasn't a fool : since her arrival, he acknowledged she wasn't Christine. Christine couldn't not change, in twenty years. And the link joining her, once his beloved one, to this girl was obvious. It was a stroke of bad luck. But he decided to take advantage of it : revenge is a dish best served cold… and eaten with a charming lady.

Evelina knew a lot of those angel of music's stories her grandfather liked to tell. She believed in them… let's say, only during her first years. Evelina wasn't like her mother. Evelina wasn't gullible, she was a logical mind. Coldly logical. And for the Angel of Music, she hadn't needed to see him to play the piano skillfully : her professor taught her greatly. Besides, she never wanted to perform professionally, as a musician. In fact, she ignored almost everything from her mother's mysterious former teacher. So, she was puzzled. « My… Angel of Music ? Do you want me, Sir, to show you why it cannot be, with iconography ? Cartesianism ? Theology ? My Angel of Music !... Come on ! You look, at best, as sympathic as the Lame Devil* ! »

The « Lame Devil » didn't react : « Then, you could call me the Phantom of the Opera. » A name that sank into oblivion years ago, just as the opera did. Twenty years ago, the Palais Garnier was destroyed by a gigantic fire. Only ruins remained, only a few rooms still in good condition… This place saw Christine Daaé's triumph. Evelina guessed it correctly : the place she explored was this one. And talking about it's strange, only occupant… she won't leave him alone : « A Phantom, Sir ? » Her tone curiously reminded Erik the way he spoke to Carlotta, twenty years ago… « Fine ! Erik, if you insist », he muttered angrily. The lady looked satisfied – as satisfied as possible, when her posture was so haughty ! She seemed to say : « you should be happy, I do not ask you all your qualities, your filiation, your five first names and your family name ! »

His fist tensed with rage, asking himself if his plot revenge was the best, after all, the Phantom turned over and went in his house. His way of behaving persuaded Evelina to follow him, if she wanted to live and to flee one day : it wasn't the best moment to provoke her gaoler. She would have to wait a little. So, she followed him, and he showed her the house around. A fantastical scenery, based on obsession for a woman : the Lake House didn't change with time. Evelina would get Christine's room, Christine's bed. Move in, Evelina ! Erik will wait for you in the dining room. You must be hungry.

_Splendid,_ thought Evelina while looking around her. A_n otherworldly scenery, under a collapsed opera house, inhabited by a masked man pretending to be alternatively a ghost and an angel, and by his young captive ! I need a director, now : the scenario is worth gold !_ She opened a wardrobe, where she found many dresses and shoes : someone waited for her a long time… Or could it be her mother's clothes ? She took the less sophisticated dress, the shortest high heels, powdered her nose quickly and entered the dining room, where her gaoler was waiting : she was starving, but the dinner wouldn't be merry.

It wasn't merry. Erik was in a dark mood, didn't eat, didn't say a word, and scarcely breathed. Evelina tried her best to eat with haste and refinement, which wasn't easy at all, and was truly impressed by his attitude, more than she would never admit. They barely spoke to each other. She had the audacity to ask him the question that burned her lips, only when the meal came to an end : « Why did you kidnap me ? » In fact, she had a very precise idea about it, but she wanted to hear his answer.

« Did I forgot to tell you ? Because I love you.

\- No, she firmly answered, looking the Phantom of the Opera right in the mask. Because you want to avenge yourself from my parents. Because you love my mother. What a beautiful revenge !

\- An awesome revenge, indeed. » His answer was a serious one.

There was an icy silence around the table. Evelina ate a last bite, then left the table without further ado : no need to be kind with this… despicable person. And she went to sleep. Nothing worth a good night, before a battle.

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Note : The Lame Devil (Le Diable boiteux) is a french romance written by Lesage. This devil is in fact the god of love. He's looking ugly, and he's really skilled when it's time to match two unsympathetic people. So, Evelina is really provoking Erik at this time, not knowing she's right about his look.

**... And that's it ! I hope you enjoyed this first chapter. Please feel free to review ! See you soon. ;-)**


	2. First Sparring

And here's the second chapter, so everyone could see all the differences between this one and the previous one. ^^ I won't translate the next chapters as quickly as this one, because they're pretty long (and, you know, there's also work and stuff IRL...), but I'll do my best ! Many thanks to Vivstar and to Nightvision-uk for reviewing so fast and so kindly ! I hope you'll like this ! ;-)

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The next day, Evelina woke up early and spent two hours powdering her nose. Her nightly thoughts came to a good conclusion : best not to confront the masked man too directly, not too soon. Slowly put his defiance asleep. Then, slowly recover her rights. Act like a reed, not like an oak : obey, but survive. However, keep her defiance and her pride : it won't be pleasure cruise for him, the game won't be easy, in order not to arouse his suspicion too early. Understand his motivations, learn what happened between him and her mother, which events lead to this kidnapping. Put together a lengthy and sophisticated strategy. Therefore, she entered the dining room as an elegant lady, not as a victim cold, but not hostile, and way quieter than before. Let the battle begin.

The Phantom was waiting for her in the dining room, just as the day before. She noticed a light change in his clothes : he wasn't wearing his huge cape, only an iridescent vest on his shirt. But he kept his mask. When she came in, he stood up, greeted her, and he even pulled her a chair, as if he wanted to be forgiven by acting gently, as if he wanted to redeem himself for all the mistakes he did the day before. She did her best to act affable and to do justice to the breakfast.

« Don't you eat ? she asked shortly after she began to eat, when she saw that, just like the other day, he wasn't eating anything.

– Nor angels, nor phantoms eat.

– You are not an angel, nor a phantom.

– Please content yourself with this answer. »

She understood. _Of course ! He would have to take off his mask, to eat. Therefore, he would unveil a face he do not want to be seen. Not an useless precaution, when you kidnap a lady…_

« Did you sleep well, Evelina ?

– Mademoiselle de Chagny. Yes, very well, thank you. »

But she didn't ask him the same question. To be perfectly honest, the fact that he used her first name both terrified and offended her. Offended : she found his way of talking very discourteous; terrified : it showed her all his stranglehold on her fate. All the things he could do to her. Oh, of course, he acted quite correctly this morning, but she kept in mind all of his doings from the day before: the kidnapping, the threats, the cold opera, the black roses, the shivers in the crypt, the run away across the halls… the apparition in the box five's curtains… Yes, he gave her an insight of everything he was capable of, and she clearly didn't want to learn more about it.

« What are you going to do to me?

– I will marry you, mademoiselle de Chagny. »

At least, he used her surname without any irony, even with courtesy.

« Of course. The usual ways of asking a lady's hand were too bland for you, compared to this one, weren't they?

– Maybe did I have some reasons to act like this.

– I have no doubts about it. After all, telling your former beloved that you would like to marry her daughter… is not very common. However, the affliction this kidnapping causes to her…

– … is the logical consequence of her foolishness. Although I regret it.

– But how did my mother hurt you so bad, to deserve such a revenge ?

– Don't you understand ? »

The tone became more severe, the man stood up. During Evelina's trial in the opera house, yet, he told her the story : Christine, who fleed the Lake House with her fop of a fiancé, when himself was falling into tears near the stairs. Wasn't it crystal clear ? Until the last step, he waited for her to turn over and come back to him. But she left, without a single glimpse behind. He set the opera house on fire. Then, he awaited death. During his agony, he went to the Persan's house and gave him his last wishes : when he'd feel death's hand on his shoulder, he would send him a letter with some of the things he liked most; then, the Persan would only have to publish a necrology in the _L'Époque_ newspapers, and Christine would come back for a last goodbye…

Erik wasn't even mischievous, this time. He frankly decided to die, just as you could decide to eat chicken for dinner or to wear a green coat to go outside for a walk. One month after the events of the opera house, the Persan kept his promise : the necrology was published. Christine would read it, Christine would come… and the former Phantom of the Opera would wait for her, he won't die without seeing her one last time. He knew she was far away, he knew she took a train to the North with her husband, he knew it would take some time for her to come, he would wait. He waited… a day, a week, two weeks, a month… two months… three months… and Christine didn't came. Christine never came. Christine… He tried to find some justifications for her, during a while. Perhaps the news would take more time to reach her than expected. Maybe she was unable to travel. Maybe she never received the necrology. Or anything else…

When Christine and Raoul de Chagny came back to Paris, he had to admit it. It was seven years after their escape. They had children : a daugther, two sons. And they were coming back to Paris, and they didn't even look at the Opera ! Christine didn't sing anymore ! Ô Christine, what was the point ? You were not the pure young woman, the new Marguerite, the radiant Marguerite anymore, you only were the countess de Chagny… You were smiling in the crowd, but where did your soul go, Christine ? Where did the music go ? Then, he decided they'd have to pay their treason. After seven years waiting, he spent thirteen years working meticulously. Preparing the opera house, every square inch of the opera house. Make a trap of the opera house. And get Christine and her fop for their stone heart.

« No, but I suppose I will… And now… What am I going to do ?

– You have a lot of possibilities… You could whine upon your fate, in your room. You could wander in the opera house. You also could stay with me, but I suppose you won't like it… Whatever, you should get used to the ineluctable…

– So smooth !

– Isn't it ? You also could read in the library, or…

– Yes ? »

She seemed to notice a bit of shyness in his voice.

« We are in an opera house. We could play some music. »

Evelina looked kind of disappointed, because this idea was really foreseeable.

« I also could try to find a way to flee, couldn't I ?

– Yes, I suppose. But you won't find any.

– There must be at least one way, if I managed to get here !

– Certainly. In fact, there is about twenty of them. But you will not find them.

– Are you sceptical about my intelligence, Sir ?

– No. You are just living in the wrong world.

– Oh, so, there are many worlds ? Silly me ! The world of the livings, and the world of the deads, isn't it, sir Angel-Phantom ? Come on ! Do you persist with this ridiculous idea ? Are you going to tell me that the twenty ways out all involve flying or going through walls ?

– Absolutely. To be perfectly exact, three of them involve « flying », as you say, and the seventeen remaining involve « going through walls ».

– You must be kidding !

– Not at all. Besides, you are living in a world made of appearances and rationality. The twenty ways out of the opera are in the other world, a world of magic and truth… As long as you won't live in it, you won't see a single thing. And you, miss, are far from living in it. I am not sceptical about your smartness, mademoiselle de Chagny. I am sceptical about the way you see the world. But when you will get into this world of magic and truth, you will never get out of it…

– Twaddles !

– Be patient… »

A world of magic and truth… As if those were even compatible ! thought Evelina, getting more and more upset by all the aberrations and the illogical affirmations Erik said. Getting out of the opera house through the walls ? Come on ! And getting out flying, really ?

« By the way, mademoiselle de Chagny… Do you know that opening a door is a way to get through a wall ?

– … »

Erik left the room, laughing sardonically. She would never understand… She could not understand, because she was stubborn, because she only see what meets the eye, because she only trusted her senses… If she didn't, she would have seen many, many things. She would have understand that the little house in the snow, wasn't a little house : only a scenery, a very good setting, he took out of some opera staging and modified. And for the icy forest, it was only a set of mirrors skillfully arranged for the trees, another setting on the ground for the snow, and a false temperature. She would have understand that the satanic chapel was only a dancing room, with a setting… If she had paid any attention to anything else, except behing upset and wanting to confront him, when he was dragging her in the cellars, she would have seen how he activated the hidden trapdoors to « go through the walls ». But she was blind, and still she thought she was able to see, to understand everything… And now, she would be looking for a way out, he knew it. And she will step in front of the doors without even noticing them, because she didn't know anything. The Persan would have noticed them in a single glance. Christine would notice them, after a while. But Evelina was the daughter of her father, and she won't understand…

Erik was right : Evelina spent her morning looking closely every single square inch of her room, looking for a way out. Nothing in the wardrobe. Nothing in the cabinet. Nothing behind the dressing table. Nothing under the bed. Nothing, nothing, nothing ! Nothing, except the door she knew. But, maybe, there was nothing in her room ?... She quickly ate her lunch, then got back to her inspection, then, weary, thought about the events of the day before. She activated a lot of trapdoor, without understanding how they worked. But Erik seemed to know each of them, by heart… He dragged her through the walls and the water. There were twenty ways out to find, if she ever wanted to flee this opera house, and she wasn't even able to find a way to leave Erik's house, except taking the boat…

Maybe there was no way out.

She had to be sure.

Evelina left her room and looked for her gaoler nearby. Now knowing there was a way to leave it, the Lake House looked way more interesting than before. She indeed saw doors, seated in very common places for doors, but that were in fact not doors : only illusions. The only doors acting normally while looking like doors were the ones of her room. However, she was hearing vague noises, maybe music… There had to be another room… maybe many other rooms. Therefore, there had to be a door. But there was no door, at least, there hadn't any common-looking door…. She went round and round in circles for a while, looking around her, inspecting closely every wall. The music went off. She palpate the walls for so long, her fingers were hurting and bleeding.

All of a sudden, a teasing laugh burst near her, in a place where she was just a moment ago… She looked there, saw nothing. It wasn't a dream ! And now, she had lost the thread of her inspection ! And the laugh still resonated in the room, on her left, on her right, in front of her ! And there was nothing ! She finally turned over and saw Erik standing, straight and impassive, near an open section of wall… a section, where he painted a door, in trompe l'œil.

« Magic and truth, mademoiselle de Chagny. You see, but you are definitely blind… »

Evelina didn't answer. What could she say ? She began by eliminating the apparent doors, thinking he won't hide a mecanism there, and yet ! Yet ! It was pretty clever, she had to admit it.

« Always so delicate. I was looking for you.

– Here I am, at your disposal.

– You… offered me… music.

– Oh. Here, come in. »

He moved aside to let her go in. Evelina noticed something in his attitude, as if he were surprised to see her come… Perhaps he was smelling a rat, in case he were partially right… But she would try her best to act tactfully. She was a Chagny, good grief ! Besides… she had to admit it, the music room attracted her. There was a piano… and dozens of instruments and scores. The Phantom of the Opera had to be a very good musician ! Evelina was her mother's daughter : she went to the piano, brushed it with the top of her fingers, then turned over Erik, who granted her the permission to play… She sat down, played some scales and arpeggios to warm up, then, suddenly, in the middle of an arpeggio… played the very first measures of the Hammerklavier sonata, without hesitation. Erik jumped with surprise, paid more attention to the young woman. Her scales only reflected the good student of an average teacher; they were pedantic and simple, without any musicalithy, without any soul. But this… This was an almost unknown sonata, considered almost impossible to play, extremely difficult… and yet that little girl attacked it bravely. She made mistakes, of course sometimes, she even hesitated, he noticed it, but he was still amazed by this unexpected musicality… He didn't dare to interrupt her before the end of the first movement…

« Who taught you this ?

– Sir Firmin Richard.

– Did you force his hand ?

– Only a little… »

Firmin Richard… The former director of the Opera Garnier, whose lack of competence was so often the victim of his teasings ! He thought, this man was scarcely able to appreciate tasteless composers, like Haydn, Cimarosa or Gluck… And now, this girl pretended to be his student ! He pulled himself together.

« However, you did a lot of mistakes while playing. »

She blushed, but didn't say a word. He was correct, after all.

« May I ? » he asked, showing the piano. Evelina handed over to him, intrigued. He launched into the fugue of the first movement, without any hesitation, surrending himself to the music… Charmed, she leant towards him… A sort of magic, of another kind than the one he mastered, reigned around them… A magic, which reminded him something… She was getting closer, or so he thought… She leant upon the chair… He felt her breath slide under his mask… His mask ! No !

Erik moved aside in a cacophonic chord, causing Evelina to jump with surprise. Both of her hands were on the chair, she raised them in a defensive reflex. Their eyes met : in his, defiance and anger in hers, surprise and fear. They looked down at the exact same moment.

« Do… not… ever… touch… the mask ! Never ! No matter why !... Twenty years ago, your mother dared to touch the mask ! She saw Erik's face ! No one can see this face, no one !

– I never intended to unmask you.

– I… Hopefully no ! Or… »

He didn't say a word more, but everything in his posture implied the worst punishments if anyone ever tried to unmask him. She tried to smile, to silently convince him she would never, ever unmask him by surprise. If, some day, he had to show her his face (and she hoped so !), he would have to do this freewillingly… He would finally do it, somehow : he was only a man, with all the flaws a man could have, and the first of them was vanity… Nevertheless, a thing he revealed surprised Evelina : her mother saw his face, but no one should ever see him (theorically). Therefore, he wasn't wearing a mask because he kidnapped her. He was wearing a mask for another reason, affecting everyone… Consequently, the possible reasons of masking himself were less abundant. He could be a criminal on the lam, or another kind of famous person hiding himself, but a mask wasn't exactly a way to go unnoticed, and hiding himself under the opera house would during twenty years would have been more than enough to sink into oblivion… No, it was something else. Something that could bother everyone else, but not him… It was not a way to remain anonymous for anyone. It was about hiding something… A disfigured face, perhaps. This hypothesis was interestingly coherent… and it revealed a possible weakness of her foe. She had to know more about it, without letting him notice it…

Erik stood up. He won't take the risk to continue playing : he learned defiance the hard way. He should have remembered Christine. Distracting him with music… She seemed to be worthy of her mother's family… The old father Daaé, violinist… Christine, singer… Evelina, pianist ? She had her mother's heart, but her father's mind.

« I would be interested in hearing you play the second movement of Beethoven's sonata, mademoiselle de Chagny… »

Obviously relieved by this outcome, Evelina sat down and played… Erik leant towards her, his hands on the chair, looking at her tiny aristocratic hands running on the ebony and the ivory… She almost felt his breath on her neck… He unmasked her, and she didn't notice it… He saw her heart under the corset, the magic and the truth under the appearances… Evelina did not protect herself… She didn't even react… With the exact same fascination Christine felt twenty years ago, Erik looked at Evelina's face, her sophisticated air annihilated by a soft and deep passion… She… Christine, twenty years ago… Christine saw him like this, transfigured by his own music… but how could this repulsive face ever be transfigured ? She got scared !... Oh, if only Evelina had a mean heart ! Their sufferings would come to an end, quickly ! If he only saw, as Christine, the horror under the mask ! He would have withdrawed in fear, too ! But, no ! And now, he could not withdraw anymore ! And those notes, singing a serene despair, those notes she seemed to deeply understand ! Those untrustworthy notes… The illusion they could… maybe… No. Christine too could have, maybe… But she never had. They only were appearances.

Silently, Erik left the room, leaving the last notes die under Evelina's hand. A moment later, she would put her mask back in place, and everything would be buried under the keyboard's lid. She would be surprised not to see him, he would quickly come back in with a score in his hand : pointless justification. They will keep cohabiting hardly together, she would keep looking for a way out, they might fight sometimes, they will maybe play some more music… And then, the world of magic and truth would merge with the world of appearances and reality… The more he would love her, the more she would hate him… The more he would love her for herself, the more she would think he loves her mother… Loved, for herself… and never loved back…

What a beautiful, sad revenge… The one which come back to bite you… Who got fooled, her, or him ? He was so self-confident, the day before ! His plan looked so failsafe ! Christine and Raoul were paying the price, and he was paying even more… She would finally go, just like her mother… And everything will start again… Ô Christine, why didn't you come back ? If you did, Christine de Chagny, twenty years ago ! How many tragedies would you have avoided, how many miserables would you have saved, including you !

If only… only…

_If only I didn't love her so much…_

Evelina got surprised not to see him, he came back holding a music sheet : pointless justification. Soon, magic and truth felt asleep under the keyboard's lid. They kept cohabiting hardly together. At dinner, she looked as cold and reserved as usual, sometimes sarcastic : she was worthy th. The masks were still on their faces : a dinner of busts. They had to pull themselves together… She asked him if he could show her the opera, the next day… including the way to her mother's dressing room… She didn't like to stay in one place : after all, she was half-scandinavian. And if he were so sure she couldn't find any way out… She will come back, anyway. And he would give her advices about music… _She should get used to the ineluctable..._ How wrong those words could ring, now ! Did he really said them, he, who mastered the music so well ? Wasn't he playing with the appearances ? Wasn't he faking self-confidence, while playing his gaoler role, when he was feeling his plans collapsing under his feet ? Where was his world of magic and truth, except lying under the piano's lid, as he formerly was hiding behind a reflect ?

Oh, really, what a wonderful revenge…


	3. The Opera

**Hi! I know it's been a while since I translated the second chapter, but here's the third one. Have fun reading it! ^^**

**Thanks to all my reviewers! I tried my best to follow your advices, Vivstar. =) And to Alexandria: thank you! I think the similarities you noticed between this fanfiction and Leroux's novel are a consequence of the translation from French into English, but, anyway... I hope you won't be disappointed. =)**

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If there only was one single thing Erik really hated, it was to lose control. Lucky him (and many of the human race, as he said), it happened only a few times in his whole life. However, this time, he lacked luck: if there was only one single thing Evelina ever hated, it was to lose control. And again, lucky her (and many other people), it happened only a few times in her life. Thus, both of our protagonists spent a rough night, either trying to pull himself together and to understand what happened in his heart; the other, pondering strategies to flee. Neither of them, though, seemed on the verge of finding a solution to their problem in the morning, when Evelina left her room and met Erik in the dining room. The Phantom of the Opera looked like he had a plan, and she didn't like it.

He shut up during all the breakfast, excepting the usual courtesies. Once she had finished her meal, he explained her his idea:

"May I, mademoiselle de Chagny, show you your domain around?"

Her domain? He didn't seem to notice her stupefaction – and her apprehension.

"I would suggest you to wear comfortable clothes", he calmly said. "The opera house isn't what it used to be anymore."

This was absolutely reassuring, given that he left her wandering alone in those abandoned and dangerous places for hours some days ago! Anyway, she already enjoyed a so wonderful tour (the Opéra Garnier, visited in about ten hours, in the cold, wearing an evening dress, with the obligation to bring four ridiculous roses to a cloaked and masked psychotic pretending to be your ancient love), why would she do it again? Didn't she see enough of the panorama from the roofs, the magnificence of the sewers, the comfort of that shaking elevator, the ballroom and its absurd dramatization, those mirrors where your reflection all of a sudden became very masculine and got its own independent life, and so many other things only a madman could honestly conceive? And didn't she enjoy, for three days, his kind hospitality, buried deep in the ground, ashore from this lake of the dead, in a phantom's company? Well, it seems like it wasn't enough for him! And now, she was feeling like Persephone, Nature's daughter kept in the Inferno by a terrifying and dead uncle, which, in any other situation, would have been absolutely paradoxical. She wanted to grin ironically, like she formerly did, but the thoughts of her finding a way out kept her from doing it. She heard herself answer, with all the hypocrisy her courtiers ancestors from the 17th-century were once capable of:

"I'd be glad to, Sir."

Needless to say, this was enough to wake all the phantom's suspicion up. His former relationships with women (unconventional, of course, and they also were unconventional) taught him to understand "no" when he heard "yes". Anyway, he distrusted this little vicomtesse de Chagny, as beautiful as she could be: one should never trust any woman. Christine taught him so, and his… misadventures with the gypsies confirmed that fact. Christine, who abused his trust! Christine, and she formerly was so sincere! Sometimes, love forces you to do unusual, odd things… But this one had no suitor, as far as he knew. She wasn't under some stupid boy's fascinating charm, as were her mother twenty years ago. Of course, this thing would happen. Every single opera girl he met in his life acted the very same way. And for the gipsy girls, it was even worse! And for the aristocrats… Christine was considered a very reasonable girl, and indeed once she was, before she failed, too! And him, who didn't look handsome at all, with his disfigured fifty years old, who wasn't the romantic suitor any young girl could dream of, not at all! She would fool him, just like the other one! Such mother, such daughter!

Evelina changed her clothes and came back prettier than ever, without all the unnecessary accessories of her dresses. He gallantly offered her his arm, saw her hesitate, noticed the fierce glance in her eyes, the glance of a captive plotting something, before she smiled and accepted. He realised it was the first time she accepted a physical contact with him: before, he had to force her. He even would have liked it, in another situation. But now, he was forced to be suspicious and reproached the whole world with this lack of confidence, albeit he provoked it.

He took a hidden hallway she didn't notice (magic and truth, as always!), and went to the next floor. The fire destroyed almost everything there: the strong walls of the Opera house, blackened with soot, a few objects, some stoves blackened and twisted by the heat, were the only thing that remained. The atmosphere in here was infernal, literally: Evelina was unable to restrain her shivers. Erik felt it and smiled under his mask: impressionable! And she would have shivered even harder, if she came there when the opera house was still alive, when employees shovelled big batches of charcoal into the stoves! The obscurity, the ember's red lights, gave them the appearance of devils, and one could easily think this was a true inferno. But there wasn't a single surnatural thing in there... He told her about it, she laughed: indeed, she would have preferred it. In the old Scandinavian legends, the Inferno was cold and dark; a warm Hell would have looked less terrifying to her… It all was a matter of culture.

The fifth floor below was as creepy as the sixth. The fire there seemed to have reached it a little less, but everything was black and dusty, with large rooms looking like cathedrals' naves. Sometimes, surviving parts of staging emerged from the place's loneliness, and they also were twisted in odd, absurd positions. Evelina gave up the hope of finding clues in those abandoned, buried floors: even a phantom of the Opera wouldn't be mad enough to take such a risk. _Twenty entries,_ she kept repeating to herself, _twenty entries, therefore twenty ways out of this forsaken opera house…_ Between those twenty ways, one at least would lead her to the Rue Scribe, where she was "kidnapped", but this one should have been sealed off, since he kidnapped her. It was only logical. Another one should be somewhere in the phantom's lair, and maybe required to cross the lake, but this one would be a dangerous way out. Therefore, there were still 18 entries, including three requiring to "fly", thus, that she won't find (except one: jumping from the roof… but she preferred not to try it). Erik, as for him, continued to show her empty, dark rooms, lighted only by some torches (which he admittedly placed there just before the visit).

At one time, he stopped in front of something that must have been the staging of an ancient palace, more or less saved by the fire, but covered in dust and soot. "One of the House of the Lake's entries", he said, pushing on the central leaf of a column. "If you ever use it, it will lead you to… a former Communards' oubliette. Oh! it's not quite dangerous… Not anymore. I bet you understand: when this opera house was still inhabited… I had to guarantee myself from unwanted curiosities!" He laughed maniacally, and his laugh was grinding, even more deformed by the mask, and Evelina realised she wanted to be anywhere, but not in this place; she wanted to be far from this opera house filled with trapdoors, secrets halls and creepy rooms. She dropped her guide's arm, and he immediately stopped laughing. "Aren't you amused?" he asked, as if he were frankly stunned. She wanted to hit her head against the column.

"No, I am not! How many dead, Erik?"

"Six, I think. However, I have nothing to do with it!"

"Come on…"

"Don't you believe me? Five of them were Versaillais locked in there by Communards. And for the last one… He should have been more careful, before going in an adventure… In a place like this one, no one can help you… except me, but if anyone sees me, then he has a good reason to die… Oh! not you, Evelina. Nor your parents, nor the Persan… You are the only exceptions…"

This time, she frankly was unable to hide her fear. He realised how clumsy his words were, tried to soften them, but it was too late. Once again, Erik realised his humour was the less understandable humour ever. Maybe seeing so many people die, having been condemned to hang some of them, somewhere, sometime, to protect himself or to entertain the Sultane, trained him more than he thought to be insensitive… Well, it didn't matter. Anyhow, him and the human race…

Evelina, as for her, didn't see it from this viewpoint. More than ever, she wanted to flee; more than ever, she realised she shouldn't. This man was obviously dangerous. Provoking him was too risky. It would be in her interest to get used to her new situation._ To get used to the ineluctable,_ as he said the day before. Earn some time. She still looked at him with horror, but tried to control her emotions, to smile. To act. Evelina never played any role, never considered herself as a good actress; now, she was learning that necessity is a good teacher. She tried to look at ease. When she was exploring the opera house, she shivered, but she persevered and she managed… She managed to run into this scarecrow's arms! Anyway, it only was an opera house. Perhaps, he was trying to scare her. The hidden way in a column… in a staging… Surely, horrible things happened here, but on the stage… But, this man… This man was capable of the worst. He kidnapped her! He forced her to accomplish an absurd quest! And the macabre dramatization… On which side of his dichotomy was he living? The master of Magic was he living in the truth, or was the master of Truth living in the magic?

Meanwhile, Erik was thinking about the best way to convince the young woman she had nothing to fear from him – except, of course, if she tries to be the smartest. Yes, he committed, as the Persan said, "crimes", but was it his choice? No. It was his life against the other's. And he chose to survive. Of course… but this wasn't really a way to reassure Evelina de Chagny, not at all. He knew he could harm her – even if he wouldn't do it willingly. After all, he already kidnapped her, taking her away from her family. He forced her to wander for hours in the opera house's ruins. He kept her, locked in the House of the Lake. He showed her some dark places, the very same places which were going to be her home and her life, those dead places, deprived from music, abandoned to the devastating effects of time. And Christine!...

"Mademoiselle de Chagny", he said after a long time, "you should know that a trap isn't a trap anymore when you know its existence: then, you learn how to avoid it, or to understand it. The five Versaillais killed here were killed by Communards, thirty years ago, when those places, as hidden as they could be, weren't traps. Only the last man fell in a trap, and only because he trusted his senses. Someone who knows how to see magic and truth could find the trapdoor and the exit. If I could say, his dead is the direct consequence of his curiosity and his ineptitude. He shouldn't have followed the Phantom of the Opera."

Meanwhile, he invited Evelina to walk in the pathway. She leaned herself, afraid, into the column: what if he locked her in? What if he were plotting something mischievous, once again? The torch lighted a narrow way, stairs against the column's bole, and a trapdoor in the back of the staging. Clever. Moving the staging wouldn't show any trace of the trick. She picked up her dress, went into the bole with difficulty. The Phantom offered her his help, she refused, he laughed then followed her in the column, pushed the trapdoor and fell into it. She followed him. They ended in a dark tunnel. The Phantom's torch lighted seeping walls, obviously the fire didn't reach them. About fifteen meters later, the both arrived in the oubliette. Erik inclined the torch towards the wall, Evelina took a look. She saw the letters R. C. engraved in the stone.

"This must be familiar for you!" said Erik with half of a grin. Evelina turned pale.

"My father… My father came here!"

"Let's say… I brought him here…"

Evelina didn't answer, horribly pale. This man was scaring her even and even more, when he was trying to reassure her. He locked her father in the oubliette, just as he imprisoned her now. He locked him in this awful oubliette!

"Don't you see, mademoiselle de Chagny?... The vicomte's fine, now…"

"Please, shut up!" she exclaimed, flustered.

"He even could have escaped, if he had found the trapdoor. Weren't I generous? He only had to pay a little attention to flee… What a pity he hadn't resigned himself to do so, because he loved your mother…"

The vicomtesse de Chagny was about to cry. She looked at the stones, at the floor, looking excitedly for clues betraying the suffering this oubliette once knew, but everything around her was so… horribly clean, and so quiet. And so lost, too, in the depths of the opera house. And Erik's presence, this immense black shadow behind her… Evelina felt she was crying, without even trying to restrain her tears, almost without noticing them. She pressed her hand on the engraved brick, hardly… and felt it was moving. She pushed a bit more and opened the way out, and she was feeling the Phantom's mocking gaze on her shoulders. Calmly, firmly, she turned around, the lips closed, the eyes swollen, the cheeks still wet, and her glance braved him as she stood, straight, noble and sad, with her aristocratic face erected in a mute blame, as the Commander's statue in front of Don Juan. Oddly triumphant.

And she read all the indifference possible in his posture, but the fiercest rage in the universe in his eyes, when he ran into the hidden way, leaving her in the dark. She rushed behind him, to avoid being abandoned in the oubliette, in this freaking darkness that saw languish and die so many unfortunate people. She was almost running, trying to reach the torch. The Phantom turned around, looked at her, then continued walking. Stairs, a bit steep, between the walls. Evelina was thinking about her father, who didn't find the exit… if it even existed when he was trapped. The probability for him to write his initials on the mechanism was low; but the probability for him not to push hard enough to make the brick move was even lower. Minuscule! And she… she found it, and it was perhaps the first trapdoor she found alone… And this pathway was bringing her back into her jail… into the music room, near the organ… and then, to her room… far from this man's eyes…

Many long, silent hours went by, in the House of the Lake. Sitting in front of her dressing table, Evelina was crying her eyes out, lost between a thousand reasons to hate her abductor. He mistreated her mother, imprisoned her father, killed many people… He trapped her in this sordid opera house, underground, he mistreated her during an entire day, then tried to be…. "kind", only to show her every part of this horror! Only to make her understand better, that she would never escape from him, never! And those ruins he called his "domain"… his house… those ruins, steaming from an ancient love, burning from the worst hate ever… her house… Here, she would spend her saddest days, in this dark grave, accompanied by the Phantom of the Opera and the Angel of Music… her husband… She promised him her love, four times… How badly she wanted to escape, then! Why hadn't she thought more? And what if she had confronted him, what would he have done?... What was he going to do, anyway? Prudence and wisdom encouraged her to be kind and accommodating… Compassion, too… That immense pain, intense enough to blacken blood-red roses, kept her from hating entirely this Erik. And there she was, there they were…

How many hours went by, drowned in tears? She never knew. A few, perhaps. The sound of a piano woke her up from her drowsiness and incited her – how foolishly! – to enter the music room. Erik was singing softly an old English song, and accompanying himself on the piano.

_… Your eyes, your mien, your tongue declare,_  
_That you are music everywhere…_

It was the first time she heard him sing. And now, she perfectly understood the fascination this man had exerted on her mother, a so fine musician, with such a voice… a soft, but powerful voice, so perfectly mastered, without any defect, without any superfluous vibrato… inflecting so easily… without any apparent effort… How many singers would sell their souls to Mephistopheles, to have such a voice!

_Pleasures invade both eye and ear,_  
_So fierce the transports are, they wound,_  
_And all my senses feasted are,_  
_Tho' yet the thread is only sound,_  
_Sure I must perish by your charms,_  
_Unless you save me in your arms…_

Did he know she was there, immediately behind him, feeling every part of the passion he was putting in his music, shivering at every note? Her lips, her eyes, her clenched fist, her body was all shaking; some new tears flourished on her cheeks, but not comparable in a single way to the previous ones… Three of them flowed. Oh! no, one definitely couldn't hate this man…

Erik turned around, he was looking at her. Evelina noticed he wasn't wearing that full mask he wore for the previous days, but a mask showing his lips and his chin. Obviously, this one was a little bit more comfortable to sing. She noticed his pallor, his skin a bit loosened by age, some tiny wrinkles already… He looked older than her father, maybe ten years older, therefore about fifty years… And there was the husband Fate gave her… A masked man, older than her own father, living under a former opera house… The lips she was seeing were the ones that would kiss hers… And this voice, singing so magnificently Purcell's airs would sing his love for her… or, for her mother… Some dark feeling was growing up in her chest. He invited her to sit, and began to sing another complaint.

_Lost is my quiet forever,_  
_Lost is life's happiest part,_  
_Lost, all my tender endeavours_  
_To touch an insensible heart!_  
_But though my despair is past curing,_  
_And how undeserv'd is my fate,_  
_I'll show, with a patient enduring,_  
_My love is unmov'd as her hate._

The music room suddenly looked odious to her, and even more despicable his masked inhabitant. Evelina jumped on her feet, her eyes blazing, and her cheeks red from rage.

"Oh, really?" she almost shouted, in a cold anger. "Are you surprised? What were you expecting from a woman you kidnapped, mistreated and imprisoned? Did you even think she would love you back, when you love her so absurdly? No! You could be the most handsome, the most talented, the most generous man ever, but for her, you would always be a monster, the monster who teared her from a loving family! Sing on, sing on, Angel of Music! Sing on your ancient airs, when every note, every word they are made of, are the exact opposite of your acts! The time where one kidnapped his future wife are over!"

Her shivers and tears were now everything but sacred. Gone, the magic; only truth was left. Evelina looked at Erik for a while, her jaw shaking from the rage she was trying to restrain, then she left and drowned in her tears in her room.

The next morning, she found a blood-red rose with a black ribbon on her dressing table.

* * *

**Remark: the poems I quote are _If Music Be the Food of Love_ and _Lost is my Quiet_, both airs from Henry Purcell. If you never heard of them, please look for them on Youtube, they're worth listening! (I especially recommand Kirkby's interpretations, and Mark Ainsley's for _If Music Be the Food of Love_). =)**


	4. The Persan

**And here's the fourth chapter! As you may have seen in the previous one, I did not translate some French words, because I think they're too closely related to some people and situations. Thus, the Persian will be the Persan (because it's his nickname), Evelina will be either the vicomtesse (viscountess), either mademoiselle de Chagny (miss de Chagny); Raoul will be the comte (count) and Christine, the comtesse (countess); and I will use "monsieur" and "madame" for "sir" and "milady". I hope it won't bother you. ;-)**

**Anyway, enjoy reading this little chapter, and see you sooner or later for the next one!**

**(*Publicity on* And another question: I'm currently beginning another story, about Meg's marriage with the baron de Castelot-Barbezac and Erik's potential role in it, based only on Leroux's book. Would somebody like to read a translation of it? *Publicity off!*)**

* * *

Some signs truly could be ambiguous. Sometimes voluntarily, sometimes not. Sometimes, they only were to one's eyes, when another's eyes could consider them as unambiguous. And sometimes, their signification was so vague, so uncertain, that no one could know how to interpret them. The blood-red rose on Evelina's dressing table was one of those. Nothing had a blurrier signification than a rose. Some say, it's a token of passionate love, when the rose is red: without any doubt, this was a perfect nonsense. The Phantom's black roses, some days before, had a more precise signification: they were blackened and faded, they meant desperate love, and sadness in general. The red rose of that day should therefore have the opposite meaning: strong love, and life… Was it the sign of her condemnation, or a proof of affection? Both, maybe? Or was it a way to remember her she was nothing, and belonged entirely to him? And if the red rose meant hope, which one? Hers, or her jailors? The flower was beautiful: Evelina couldn't see the signification of her damnation in it. She put the rose in her hair, and the black ribbon as a choker. She also was wearing a beige dress: it all looked like she was a bride. And she shuddered.

Suddenly, an obviousness hit her. _How_ did that rose end there? _Someone_ put it on the dressing table… and it meant, someone entered her room! With impunity! When she was asleep! _He_ saw her sleeping… he… he violated her intimacy!... Before that moment, despite his violence, she thought he was… at least a bit courteous. Respectful. She imagined that, if he was so sure to marry her, he would be gentle… She deserved that simple mark of respect, didn't she? And then, he – as the sociopath he clearly was – violated her intimacy, only to leave a rose on her dressing table.

_What if he did anything else?_

She trembled, removed the rose from her hair and tore it into pieces. She, this boorish man's spouse? No! No! She would rather marry the first suitor she could find! Her fingers smelled like roses. She took off the ribbon, and, with great anger, went out of the room, in her pseudo-wedding dress, and she was clearly decided to tell the masked man a few (or a lot) home truths. But there was nobody around. No one in the living room; no one in the music room; not even a sound. Yet the breakfast was on the table. But Erik's shadow wasn't fluttering behind the pedestal table anymore, impressive and almost silent. She called, but the only answer she got was her own echo. No one here.

The occasion to flee was wonderful: she would have leaped on it, if only she knew where the exit was! She tried to remember the way they took the day before, to get out… The door leaded to the oubliette; the oubliette, to the fifth floor below the ground. Finding a staircase won't take very long: then, run to the ground floor, run to the hall: here's the great staircase! No matter the corset, no matter the boots, no matter all the clothes she was wearing: freedom was so near! Yet, there had to be something else… Erik's absence wasn't natural: he was always hiding below the ground, for so many years… He probably still was in the opera house. Where? That was the question. She knew her time was limited, and she was shivering under the cold flow of the seconds running down her back. Sooner or later, he would notice she left the Lake House… He would look for her… He would go to the oubliette… He would go upstairs… Go through the floors… Perhaps, he would use the shortcuts he knew so well… He would find her… Did he see the rose? Oh! No doubt he would be pissed! He would immediately understand why she was here, and he would laugh, or he would lose his temper! He would take her back below the ground, and he would never leave again!

Flee! Quickly! Flee! Flee!

Evelina probed the walls, looking for a way to flee, trying to unlock the sealed off front door: a small slit, a small slit! For Heaven's sake, a small crack, a tiny crack, where she could put a letter! But who would see it? Who would dare to fetch it, so near of crumbling ruins, despite the gates? A tiny piece of paper, tossed around by the wind, soaked with rain! Oh! No! She had to get out! Quick! There must be a trapdoor… A simple trapdoor… Overtake the illusion… Find… Find… The seconds were fleeing! Why Evelina wasn't she able to follow them, to fly on time's wings, and never come back into this cursed place, and convince her parents to leave Paris, and keep up the runaway her mother should never have interrupted? Flee, somewhere Erik could not find her anymore, never!

But there was nothing, nowhere! No trapdoor!

And that silence! That silence, that gave her the impression to hear footsteps, that left a burden in her ears, with fear! That silence, almost religious, in this cathedral devoted to music, that oppressive silence, which made her want to go back to the Lake House, and too bad for her evasion, and too bad for Erik, and too bad for everything! Unbearable silence of the opera house, deadly silence, rotting silence… A silence, where every footstep she could take seemed a racket; a silence, where every footstep seemed a thunder; a silence even more quiet, because she was afraid to betray herself… Oh! so much silence, for so minor things… Finding a trapdoor was the first thing to do. Keep up looking, again, and again, and again, when _he_ was out!

She suddenly felt a hand on her shoulder.

She screamed.

Turned around.

The man in front of her wasn't Erik.

It only was a puppet.

Evelina sighed with relief, put away the mannequin, left it in a corner of the room. It only was an illusion! It only was an illusion! Everything was fine, Erik wasn't there…

Yet…

_Since when do puppets fall without help?_

"Christine Daaé…" She heard a voice from behind her.

She jumped, if possible, even higher. It wasn't _his voice_. This one had an unusual accent… An old man, with blazing eyes and a dark complexion, an apparition even scarier than every trick of the Phantom, walked forward. How did he come into the opera? Who was he? What was he doing there? How did he know her mother's name? So many questions suddenly came to her mind...

"N… no… I… I am her daughter" answered Evelina, still shivering. The old man took his glasses, put them on his nose, looked again at her, with kind of a smile, but his gaze was so intense, that she wasn't able to look him in the eyes. She saw on his face, in his eyes, so much disapproval, so much anger, so much pessimism, that she would rather not know what he wanted to do with her. Friend, or enemy?

"W... Who are you?" Evelina eventually asked, still scared.

"My name is Mehrand Nadir Khan, but here in Paris, people call me the Persan."

"Nice… Nice to meet you…"

"Nice to meet you too, mademoiselle."

He didn't really seem to find it _nice_. The Persan looked a bit dreamy, for a while, then pursued, following the train of his thoughts:

"So, _this_ is was Erik planned… Ah! My _formidable thought_ wasn't even close to the reality… Poor people…"

Giving a more detailed account of Evelina's fear isn't worth it. She remembered hearing Erik mention a Persan, when he listed the people he wouldn't harm; now, she was listening to that Persan talking about Erik… It probably was the same person, and if Erik spared him, he would have had some good reasons to do so.

"What do you mean?" she asked. "Please, Monsieur! You know Erik, you know my mother…"

"And I also know your father."

"How?"

"When this opera house was still alive, mademoiselle, two rumors were on everyone's lips: the first one was about a phantom haunting the place; the other, about a cursed Persan haunting the place… And sometimes, people linked both of those mysteries… The fact is, I was really often wandering in that place, and I knew it really well. I always liked music, but it wasn't the main cause of my omnipresence here… The main cause was the presence, in the opera house, of a man who owed me a lot, a man I knew too well, and a man, whose acts I still dreaded! When I first saw the place and its structure, I understood that magnificent Opéra Garnier was more tricked than a magic show… We, Orientals, are fond of magic, thus we keep an eye open…"

The Persan kept quiet for a moment, listening to the silence of the opera house. Instinctively, Evelina did the same, but there was nothing to hear. He pursued his account:

"Only a man, Mademoiselle, was able to disguise the reality like that: Erik. I saw him doing it, I knew his style. Erik had, in a way or another, built this place! I made my enquiries: Charles Garnier himself told me about a contractor a bit odd, found dead on the building site… I still wasn't at ease. I explored many hidden halls, but I couldn't find anything. I was at the edge to believe in his dead, when the ballerinas started to tell stories about a phantom… When Mr Debienne and Mr Poligny, who were the managers of the opera house, began to pay large amounts of money… When the box five was reserved for every evening, but always empty… I knew Erik was alive. Worse: he was there, in the opera house. I was worried: I knew was he was capable of, even if he promised me not to kill again… Erik has no word; in fact, he keeps his word, only when it suits him…"

He shut up for another while.

"Anyway, for some years, everything was fine. I didn't see the monster again, but I knew he was aware of my presence. Nothing could avoid his attention. And my _formidable thought_ never left me. Then, the triumph happened: your mother, Christine Daaé, who was a mediocre singer at this time, did an awesome performance at short notice, in _Faust_. And I acknowledged Erik's signature, in Christine Daaés terrified triumph! I got really scared, I was scared for her, I was scared for him, I was scared for that little young man who followed her in her dressing room and pretended to be her parent! And the same evening, the stagehand Joseph Buquet was found dead, hung between a farm and a staging from _Le Roi de Lahore_, somewhere on the third floor below the ground! And when people came to take the corpse, it was lying on the floor, and the rope was gone! And I knew too well why that rope wasn't there anymore: it was way too easy to recognize… In Persia, Erik was famous for his strangling skills, using the Penjabi string, a rope made of gut, very typical…"

Evelina remembered Erik's drawings, showing him holding a tiny white rope in his hand, as he was standing behind Joseph Buquet, leaning over a trapdoor… She remembered the dead body in the sarcophagus under the stage, the rose in the corpse's scrawny hands! She remembered Erik's impressive voice, when he told her he was ready to kill anyone who would dare to stand in his way…

"I tried to find Erik, and I went by the Lake. It was a mistake: I heard a magnificent, magic song, underwater… I leaned over the lake… And I nearly drowned! He spared my life, but asked me to leave and forbid me to stand in his way… I obviously didn't. Some time later, Christine Daaé disappeared, then came back, then left again… I wanted to know more about this. Given that I understood that the place where Joseph Buquet was found dead was in fact an entrance to the Lake House, I hid nearby, and, for days, I waited for the monster. I eventually saw him passing by, silently, as a shadow, and I saw him unlock the mechanism allowing him to go home. He couldn't have seen me. I waited a little, then unlocked the mechanism, too, and I heard a ravishing music coming from the walls. I found the entry: I used it. And I saw Erik, holding your unconscious mother in his arms, I saw him bringing her at his place… I waited on the shore, he told me to leave: he assured me _she was coming willingly, because she loved him as he was!_ And I wasn't reassured at all! When your mother was kidnapped during a show, the day when she wanted to flee with your father, I offered my help to the Vicomte de Chagny. We both went to the Lake House, we saw the worst… We were trapped into the torture chamber. Only your mother's prayer incited Erik to spare us. He brought me home…"

The Persan shut up, one last time. He seemed less nervous than before, but also sadder.

"I saw Erik again, some days later. He told me the end of his story: how your mother kissed him, how he freed your father from the oubliette where he put him, then how he entrusted the only woman he ever loved to the man she was loving…"

The meaning of the first episode Erik showed her suddenly became clearer: in a fit of common sense, he begged Christine to leave with her lover, instead of condemning herself to stay with him, because she did not love him… And by doing this, he brought himself down… The Persan continued:

"Erik forced your mother to swear she would come there _one last time_, after seeing his necrology in the newspapers _L'Époque_. He asked me to publish it the day when I would receive a letter including a ribbon. Three weeks later, I indeed received the letter and published the necrology…"

Evelina continued the story:

"But my mother never came…"

"No. Erik believed she was a fair woman, he thought she would come, and he tried his best to stay alive until her visit, to feel the ultimate joy of seeing her one last time… He waited long… And I even believed he was dead. But one day, I noticed some changes in the ruins of the opera house, changes that wouldn't have been noticed by passers-by, because they didn't know each corner of the Opéra… And I knew Erik was still alive. It was almost three years after the tragedy. I went to the Lake House. We chatted… He told me he wanted to end his life in his memories, and wait even more… I didn't really believed him. Surely, he had nothing else to do… but my _formidable thought_ wasn't satisfied: we, Orientals, are fatalists."

The Persan stopped his story there, leaving the young woman perfectly enlightened about the causes of her kidnapping, about the circumstances of her life her mother always hid her so carefully… But she had her head screwed on right:

"Could you help me flee, now, Monsieur? Erik scares me, and the reasons of my presence here scare me even more!"

"You don't know Erik, mademoiselle de Chagny. No one could flee him: he will always catch you. I am perfectly able to guide you out of the opera house: you would go home, you would pack your luggage… and you will _not_ be able to flee immediately, you will need a few hours… And a few hours would be enough for Erik to catch you, I can assure you that! And then, his revenge would be awful! He waited twenty long years to make you mother pay a high price, do _not_ forget it…"

"How could I forget it?" she sighed, dismayed to admit the Persan was right, to admit that flee wasn't a solution at all. "Shall I resign?"

"You will see, mademoiselle… The stories I told you should help…"

"Monsieur… Could you simply… now that you are aware of my presence here… could you tell my parents? Oh! Please, tell them, that the things happening to me are terrible, but that I'm fine…"

"I will. Now, go away, mademoiselle de Chagny, go back to the Lake House, or wander in the opera! As for myself, I will carefully leave this place, without leaving any trace: you've got everything to fear, coming from Erik…"

And while he was telling her those last words, he saluted her and left, as quiet as a shadow. Evelina also left the place, after she hesitated for a while: she took some books from the library, and brought them back to the music room. If she had to spend some time, she would rather spend it pleasantly…

Erik still wasn't back: was it reassuring, or not? The Persan – but could she trust him? – told her there was an exit near the lake… He recommended her against fleeing, but she was dying to run away, and it was the perfect moment to do it… Besides, her mother once managed to touch her cruel jailor's heart… She would know her daughter was imprisoned… Perhaps, she would try to help? But was it really desirable? Her father was admiral, maybe he could help her to avoid some traps: he learnt the art of strategy… But would his knowledge really help against an enemy like Erik? What was he going do to? Once, he was kind… only once… not twice, now that he learned how his generosity was paid back…

She opened the scores of _Don Juan Triumphant_, put them on the music stand and began to read the entire work, trying to understand the music. One aria, especially, caught her attention: she read it slowly, playing it on the keyboard, and singing the vocal part as well as she could. It was a duet between the Commander and Don Juan, a terrible, relentless, blazing duet… and it was very hard to sing or to play, for every musician. She admired how the air was theoretically built: a professional contrapuntist, like Fuchs, could really envy it. But she was trying really hard to manage to play it. She finally resigned to improvise chords on the melody, without following the scores, only to have a better idea of the music… The improvisation of the chords went into pure improvisation: she obviously had lost the thread of the scores somewhere, not knowing exactly how…

Erik came back at that moment, and heard a music recalling him… something, but what? He slipped into the room, observed the pianist, the scores… So, she _dared_ to touch his music?! And even worse: she _dared_ to do it _efficiently_?! She was still singing, sometimes, and he noticed with disappointment that she wasn't as talented as her mother. But her piano skills offset this fault.

The noise of his cape slamming made Evelina emerge from her musical dreaminess: she felt the Phantom's presence behind her, then sitting next to her… Getting irritated, she went back to the edge of the bench.

"Play both voices, mademoiselle de Chagny. I will play the accompanying."

She complied, but felt awkward because he interrupted her dreaminess, because he gave her orders, because he imposed her such a proximity. She remembered the rose, this blood-red rose she tore in the morning… He began to play, she followed, mechanically. Sooner or later, he sunk into music, sung both parts… and concluded with a brilliant crescendo, followed by a fierce chord…

Evelina had left the room.

She needed to get her thoughts in order. The aria they played remembered her too much of the Persan's story: the Commander, it was him, Erik, confronting the inconstant Don Juan, her mother… The price to pay was a damnation, and here she was, Evelina de Chagny, condemned to satisfy the consuming passion of this man, a passion she could feel in every single note…

Erik knocked on the still opened door. Such respect, coming from the man who, the very same morning, left a rose on her dressing table after breaking in her room, stunned (positively) the vicomtesse: she invited him to come in, before remembering – too late – the torn rose on the floor… He saw it, picked it up, looked dreamy for a moment, then sat on the bed and handed her what was left of the flower… A tear had ran down his cheek, it hung on the edge of his mask: she was on the verge to feel guilty, but didn't take the rose.

"You are the first, the only person outside of the opera house's artists, who heard this song", he finally said. "Twenty-one years ago… at the first performance… your mother played Elvire… and I took the role of Don Juan, after locking in the tenor Piangi… Your father decided to flee with your mother, treacherously… I used a trapdoor… Elvire disappeared under the spectators' noses… The performance was interrupted…"

She took the rose and threw it at his mask.

"The man who composed this opera – and I know who he is, he is right in front of me – seemed to have a heart! But he locks women in, but he imprisons, but he kills! But he breaks in my room at night, only to leave flowers on my dressing table, just as a vaudeville libertine!"

The last grief seemed… puzzlingly anecdotal, compared to the other ones.

"A heart?" he asked. "In the cute tales, yes, the heart matters, but in reality! It is so insignificant… Yes, I kidnapped your mother; then I freed her, but I loved her: I thought I had a heart, then, as you say. She left with your fop of a father, and she never kept the promise she made me! You can talk about a heart, when you have a face, especially when it's handsome… But when you're forced to live in the bottom of a cellar forever, you have to resign to use strength and tricks."

"Then, I have nothing to tell you. I will have to be the wife of a man without a face, without a heart, and without a name; the wife of a man who loved my mother, but took his revenge by marrying her daughter; the wife of a man living under the ruins of a former opera house… I will be cloistered like a monk, deprived of life, of light, of freedom… I will be loved for my look, loved for another woman… and loved by a man older than my father… by a man, who forced me to pass an initiatory trial, and makes up for his atrocities with roses… So be it. I will be this wife. The wife who will always curse you, look at you with hate, treat you with scorn, every single moment of your existence."

She crossed her arms on her chest, fiercely.

And he said nothing.


	5. Wanderings

From then on, silence overwhelmed the Lake House. A silence, filled with bitter, heavy tears. Music had kept quiet, too. And dust piled up, slowly, softly, as a stone shroud, on the instruments. The curtain was falling like a lead weight on the deserted stage. As much as they could, the protagonists of this dreary tragedy avoided the boards and slipped away in the ghost of the Opera. They were waiting. And they were hoping. Both of them, in a corner, nurtured contradictory dreams: she wanted to flee; he wanted to vanquish her resistance. In the rare moments when they were together, they both felt completely awkward, but dissimulated it behind masks. They avoided each other. Because reality's force would shake their certitudes too easily.

Evelina based all her hopes on two elements: the Persan's help, on which she counted despite everything, and the effects her coldness could have on Erik. The reaction he showed her when she got angry gave her much information: she put him up against it. Thus, someone who has nothing to lose, has everything to get… She would have to act carefully, softly, using his own weakness… She would sometimes be a little nicer, to earn his gratefulness, then freedom… Erik, as for him, considered that Evelina's resignation was the first battle he won against her reluctance. Yes, the price to pay was high, but he would bargain. Hate can turn to love, after all… with some patience…

For some reasons the vicomtesse was unable to understand, the Phantom of the Opera was often going out, wandering in the deserted buildings, disappeared… Maybe it only was an illusion. She noticed the bizarre staging set for her arrival was gradually dying out, unveiling a destroyed place. Magic was giving way to reality, just as if its beautiful lies couldn't last more than a few days. When he was out, she didn't try to escape, not anymore. Why? Instead, she stood behind a shattered window, somewhere in the top floors, and looked down at her wonderful Paris: the cars and the carriages, the fiacres, the omnibus, the passers-by, everything running down the streets… The quarter around the Opera was beautiful, indeed, but the Boulevard de Rivoli ended in front of the ruins. Evelina asked herself why no one wanted to buy and restore the building, after the catastrophe of 1881. The walls were still strong, the location of the Opera House was still ideal. A small investment would have been enough: the Opera would have looked new, without any trace of the fire, and there would have been new shows… Why? Perhaps, because people were too superstitious, too scared of the Phantom (a fear she now could understand). Anyway, the Académie nationale de musique now was in another place, more comfortable, without ghosts.

_What if they restored the Opera House? What would have happened? And what about its Phantom? His revenge?_

She sighed, then contemplated Paris, again. From outside, no one could see her. Sometimes, she noticed a child looking at the building, or an old woman mourning over the Opéra Garnier. But in general, passers-by despised the ruin, already old to their forgetful eyes. Its splendour was only a distant memory. The future belonged entirely to the Eden-Théâtre, less famous, less luxurious, but devoid of any kind of ghost.

The Eden-Théâtre… She was coming back from there, that gloomy day where this whole adventure began. Her parents took her to the Opera, to see one of Grétry's masterpieces, but to her, it was fairly boring, although the performers were great… She asked herself if the same opera, but here, in the Palais Garnier, would have looked better.

Until then, she hadn't seen the stage, because it was one of the places most damaged by the fire. Its crimson velvets and its golden woods were a perfect combustible. Erik sealed off the room, to avoid her any accident when she wandered in the opera, during her… forced trial. She suddenly felt the urge to see it, now that the bizarre staging was gone. She wanted to tame the place. Therefore, she went downstairs. The door wasn't locked anymore: she pushed it. A fragment of the past hit her nose: a strange smell of burnt wood, dust, fallen splendour and death. From the heart of the Opera, only a necrotized blank remained.

She lighted five candles on a candelabrum and ventured into. The floor was blackened with dust and dirt: every step she took raised grey clouds, which made her cough and got her dress and her shoes dirty. She was walking carefully, as a ghost in a ghost, a fragile light in darkness, fearful and fascinated, looking up to the abyssal ceiling, then to the crumbly floor, afraid to fall. More than everywhere else, silence and bleakness crushed the visitor's soul. Between the brunt skeletons of the seats, some terrified whispers were still sliding, the shadows of the spectators were still running towards the open door, with a silent scream, and the young woman shivered.

In the weak beam of her candles, she saw a massive and scraggy shadow, a pile of twisted bars: all that was left of the great chandelier of the opera, fallen twenty years before, and no one moved it… except to extract the dead body of the only victim, an unlucky woman who came to the opera house for the first time in her life… The small candelabrum strutted a fading light on his colossal ancestor, with a tender and pitiful gaze… The twisted branches gleamed miserably. Between those hurt branches, at the end of the poor light beam, she caught a glimpse of the footlights, now extinguished…

Then, she closed her eyes, let the last frightened shadows flee behind the rear door, and her heart gave life to the forgotten splendour. The curtain opened in her eyes, but the one on the stage was still closed. Attached to the skies of the ceiling, the great chandelier dazzled brightly, enlightening the beautiful ladies, with powdered cheeks and fancy hats, the handsome gentlemen wearing strict suits. The crimson seats, the golden woodworks, enhanced the faces. Overture. A bright orchestra, with rolling timpani, shimmering brasses, velvety strings. The last whispers, dying on the lips of some spectators, following that weird trend to go to the opera to enjoy a show. On the upper balcony and in the stalls, people were still chatting, while the noblemen sitting in the boxes were talking with refinement.

The curtain felt, unveiling Massenet's _Esclarmonde_ staging: the first opera she ever saw, when she was a child, because her mother wanted her to come with. The ghosts on the stage danced in a Wagnerian way, invisible choirs shook the whole room… Here come Esclarmonde! Here's the heroin! The audience shut up: it was Sybil Sanderson herself! The diva invoked elemental spirits: how she wanted to get her beloved Roland! But fate refused to fulfil her wish! _Ah! Roland! Regarde, Roland! Regarde, Roland, regarde-les, ces yeux plus purs que les étoiles! Tu m'as trahie, Roland!_ And she was singing, too, she was singing without even knowing it: _Roland, tu m'as trahie! Roland, tu m'as perdue! Roland! Roland! Tu m'as perdue! Regarde-moi pour la dernière fois, hélas! À genoux au sol: Parjure! Parjure! Sois maudit! Roland! Roland! Va! Sois maudit!_* In her ears, the voices of the priests and the screams of the demons were roaring: _Saisissez-vous d'elle! Saisissez-vous d'elle!_

Dizzy and breathless, she collapsed on the ground. When she was finally able to raise her head, the magic was gone. The only things left were her hands, her knees covered in dust, the protective and painful shadow of the chandelier, and the icy drafts… and the silence… the awful, sepulchral silence after a hallucination… And a swift, soft whisper brushed her ear: _Belle nuit, ô nuit d'amour, souris à nos ivresses… Nuit plus douce que le jour, ô belle nuit d'amour… Le temps fuit, et sans retour…_**

Yes, time fled, carried away on the wind's icy wings. Evelina noticed she was shivering, as her candles' light beam, sitting in the middle of the devastated stalls. She got back on her feet, dusted her dress, picked her candelabrum. There was no curtain to fall anymore: only the hangers were left, burnt to ashes.

Walking slowly and carefully, silently, she left those tragic places, the theatre of so many fictional tragedies, of so many real tragedies… Here, her mother lived the most beautiful hours of her youth… Orphan and lonely, she entrusted her heart to music… Here, her father found his lost childhood sweetheart in a young choir-girl, who suddenly became _prima donna_… Here, a man loved Christine Daaé with all his heart, with all his soul, and lost his mind…

She briefly looked back: deep in the darkness, she thought to see Elvire disappearing in a trapdoor, followed by Don Juan… The shadow of a young man leaving a box… A voice… She blinked: nothing left. Those were only ghosts… dreams… illusions… memories… Silently, Evelina de Chagny was weeping.

How many time did she wander in the opera house? She didn't know. Probably a long time. When she got back to the Lake House, no one was there. A rose on the table, where she usually ate. Erik didn't show up too frequently. What was he doing? She asked herself that question, but didn't want to know the answer: the less she saw him, the better she felt, after all. She didn't eat a single bite: the only thing she was able to do was collapsing on her bed, still wearing her shoes, still covered in dust, and weep, weep, and weep again. Delicately, she wept for hours, on the opera house, on the shadows she saw, on the victims of the past, on the present suffering. She even wept on his saturnine inhabitant, without softness, but with a little bit of compassion, because he lived for so long between those ghosts, a ghost himself, a memory like the chandelier, but a memory in flesh and bones… A shadow, just like the others, but a shadow who tried to recreate the world of so-called magic where he lived, without any doubt, the most wonderful years of his life, where his reclusion was making sense because of Christine Daaé… A shadow who, patiently, rebuilt with papier-mâché his world of illusions, and who dreamed to bring her, Evelina de Chagny, with him… A shadow, who destructed twenty years of work in a single moment of anger…

From that day, Evelina went frequently in the former theatre. Every time she pushed the door, she felt a shy draft brushing her cheek, always finer, always lonelier: the past was dying, too. She was trying to recreate the harmony she felt, oh! so briefly! with the opera house, which heart and soul she could feel… Slowly, she tamed the place: her frail white hands were now taking the dust and the debris off the ground, little by little, in a vain attempt to give the place its former splendour and dignity back. Moreover, she spent long hours sitting at the edge of the footlights or on the stall's floor, contemplating with vague eyes the immense, gaping stage, with a mourning heart.

She wasn't trying to escape anymore: why? The Persan's word were still ringing in her heart. Without any doubt, her unhoped auxiliary had told her parents about her situation. She only had to wait and hope. But days were still passing, and slowly eroding her fading hope to escape, one day or another, from the gloomy inhabitant of those tragic places… _How magnificent this place would be, without him, standing with hopeless majesty! Baudelaire's passer-by, frozen in eternity…_ And she sighed. Then, she went back to her room, to her more or less golden cage. When she was not daydreaming, she stayed the same: proud and shy. But she hardly saw anyone.

In fact, for a few days that Erik didn't show up. He certainly was there, she hardly doubted it. He simply was kind enough to leave her in peace, to avoid bothering her with his presence, and she felt grateful towards him. Besides, she was not a fool: he must have been spying on her, hidden somewhere between two walls, between two curtains, under trapdoors, or on the ceiling. He was the phantom of the opera, no matter what she could think, no matter the absurdity of this nickname. And it was another reason not to try to run away.

But on that day, Evelina's eye caught a little unusual detail… something tiny, unsure, but puzzling: one of those indistinct memories ensuring you that something around you was different than usual, without showing you the thing that changed. It took her a while to notice the problem: it was a little piece of woodwork, out of its usual alignment, on what seemed to be a cupboard… She came closer, feeling curious, and slowly tried to move the little piece of woodwork. It could be nothing. She already opened this cupboard several times, and never found any trick in it. But the piece of wood she moved away was hiding a button. She pressed it, waiting for a drawer to open, or something like that…

It was a door. A large, heavy door, and she had difficulties to move it: she pulled it enough to go through, but nothing more. She then saw a hidden, narrow pathway, behind it. Better have a look! She took candles and matches with her, then went through the door. The pathway was very long, with lots of stairs. She counted the levels, and they seemed to have no end: she already went along the seven underground floors, and there was still stairs! Two or three floors later, the pathway ended abruptly on a narrow landing. Illogical: no one would walk along a very long and sloping pathway, only to find out it was a dead-end. Logical: finding the mechanism. After groping around for a while, she eventually found a little dormer in the corner of the room. She was in the box five.

From her position, the view over the stage was unobstructed, but there was nothing left to see. The curtain had burnt years ago. The parts of the floor and the beams who survived were twisted and blackened. The whole room, seen from there, seemed phantasmagorical, almost infernal. But that stage caught less her attention than the other view, even more fascinating, of the inside of the box. It was perfectly intact: beautiful, shiny golden woodworks, six comfortable seats covered in crimson velvet, the undamaged wooden floor… Such a wonder would have frightened every nosey person who ever attempted to go inside the box, and it would also have strengthened every superstition about a haunted opera house!

There was someone in the first box, number 5. And the person in it was – alas! – easy to recognise: the only person authorized to sit there, the phantom of the opera. He was sitting there like another member of the audience, on a seat in the back of the box. She suddenly realised she unravelled the mystery of the haunted box five; and she even took the place of the phantom himself… What was he looking at, far, far away, where there was nothing to see? He sometimes sang some melodies, without any apparent coherence. Was he hallucinating, like her? Or… was he waiting for her to come, to see her as long as he could want, in a place where she wouldn't even notice his presence (from the stalls, he would have been invisible)? He moved a little, and she saw his face: he wasn't wearing a mask.

Evelina blessed her luck. She would know, and she would know without needing any duplicity or betrayal towards her gloomy jailor. Even if he still was in the shadow, and quite far from her observation point, she was able to see the details of his face. His complexion was very pale, his skin still taut, despite his age, and stretched over the prominent cheekbones, the hollowed cheeks, carefully shaven. His eyes were grey, deeply sunk in the orbit; his nose had a squashed shape; his lips were thin, and his jawbone, quite strong. On the top of this all, melancholy marked every single part of his hollowed face, ravaged by an old despair. On the right side of his face, the cheek and the forehead looked brownish, pockmarked, ribbed by lighter veins: this was the reason of his reclusion, and the reason why he was wearing a mask. She was right: his face was disfigured. Less than she thought, but enough to scare someone who wasn't expecting it… someone who couldn't even _think_ about it… someone who never saw unlucky people in her life… someone like her mother. Anyway, was it a good enough reason to hide like this?

The Phantom of the Opera went closer to the column. Afraid of revealing her presence (even a light noise is easy to hear, when there's no one around), she closed very quietly the dormer, without a sound, without a creaking, and fled silently. He hadn't noticed her: maybe, he underestimated her, thinking she wouldn't be able to find his secret doors. But everything can be learnt, even when you're a young girl, even when your name is Evelina de Chagny, and even when you've inherited your father's logical mind. She even cared to put the piece of woodwork back in its unbalanced place, when she came back in the Lake House!

She took an extra precaution by leaving the Lake House and going upstairs. Erik wanted to see her without being seen? Very well! She would do him this favour. After all, he deserved it, after giving her so many weapons against him: the truth about his disfiguration, the certainty he felt about her incapacity to find hidden trapdoors, thus finding the truth hidden in the magic… Without even mentioning how she enjoyed sitting on the former stage. She sacrificed a match, to light five candles. And quietly, almost religiously, she went closer to the stage, going through the remains of the seats, listening more than usual. She heard a very quiet movement in the curtain, almost impossible to hear: she wouldn't even have noticed it, if she weren't aware of Erik's presence. He was surely hiding somewhere in his beloved box five. More than usual, she went closer to the footlights, leaned her elbows on it: she was able to see in the orchestra pit, abyss in another abyss, the remains of two seats, of a music stand…

Slowly, she closed her eyes, took a deep breath. The room was as quiet as a cathedral, as a cemetery. She reflected for a moment. Sighed. Then she opened her eyes, tried to imagine the beginning of a performance: the silent orchestra, slipping into the orchestra pit through the little rear door, cellos first, then brasses, alti, woods, violins, timpani… Eventually, the conductor comes in: clappings! He goes on the platform, bends towards the audience, then shakes the lead violinist's hand, greets his musicians, taps twice his baton on the music stand… The noises in the room decreases… The oboist plays the A, a soft, and deep sound; the lead violinist tunes his instrument, then plays another A, to the orchestra… Muddled noises of the tuning... Then, silence. The conductor smiles: here's the key moment of the first note, formerly so famous in France! He raises his baton, begins to beat time… Overture. Strings shivering. Woods whistling. Brasses gleaming. Timpani throbbing. Crescendo. Final chords. Silence.

The musician's ghost suddenly faded away. Evelina raised her head: no curtain. Behind the footlights, the stage was empty, gaping, twisted in pain. No actor, neither: who would be mad enough to risk his life, walking on those debris? Behind her, the skeleton of the chandelier towered, shadow of a bogeyman. Evelina turned back, abruptly, leaned her back, her hands, on the footlights, as if the theatre was about to swallow her. A cold draft left her cheeks frozen, her legs shook, the candles on her candelabrum were blown off. She closed her eyes and waited.

When she opened her eyes, nothing had changed, but her hallucination disappeared. Slowly, she caught her breath. Nothing important. A grown up lady, like her, shouldn't be afraid of such illusions, or at least her father would have told her so. After all, it only was an old, abandoned opera house, where awful tragedies certainly took place, but at the time, all that was left of it was a bunch of blackened walls. A bunch of walls! She burst into laughter, thinking about it. Yes, a bunch of walls. And she was trapped in the middle of it.

_Vorüber, ach! Vorüber!  
Geh, wilder Knochenmann!  
Ich bin noch jung, geh lieber!  
Und rühre mich nicht an._

And she felt like a whisper came from the whole theatre, as if the Angel of Music's voice were whispering in her ear with the cold draft:

_Gib deine Hand, du schön und zart Gebild!  
Bin freund, und komme nicht, zu strafen.  
Sei gutes Mut! ich bin nicht wild,  
Sollst sanft in meinen Armen schlafen…_***

Sleeping forever in that so-called phantom's arms… Dying between those endless walls… Evelina collapsed. The opera house swallowed her. Alone in the dark, frightened by hallucinations she was unable to control, the fierce Evelina, vicomtesse de Chagny, so proud of her name, burst into fitful tears.

How many time did she stay there, prostate? How many time did she need to recover? She never knew it. At one moment, she simply raised her head, caught her breath, dried her tears, lighted a match, and lighted her candles. Getting back on her feet, she knocked something over, but didn't care about it. Mechanically, she took a few steps, blinking quickly, trying to gather her thoughts. She suddenly remembered the thing that fell: she turned over, ran to the place she just left. On the ground, there was a black velvet cape, one of those old-fashioned, outdated opera suits. She quickly understood how this piece of clothing ended there.

So, he left the box five… He saw she was crying… and, in an unexpected instant of humanity, he left her the cape he was wearing, she clearly remembered this detail now. What an odd kindness: the jailor, who tries to comfort his victim by covering her with his cape… She picked it up, folded it in half, and put it on her forearm: wearing it while walking down those hidden pathways was out of the question (and, in fact, wearing it _at all_ was out of the question). Then, she left, still daydreaming.

Now that she had unravelled quite a bit of the Phantom of the Opera's mystery, what should she think about it? Was his face a good reason to live shut off, to refuse to live _above the ground_, to love passionately her mother, and herself? Maybe, there was something else to understand in this man's mind: he didn't seem to enjoy his hidden life, but he seemed to make do of it, with kind of an ironic pleasure, a form of self-mockery, as if his face and his situation were a really good excuse to every single eccentricity he could dream of, to every single crime he committed? However, he was not happy… and he was trying to improve his situation by marrying a woman, the very woman he kidnapped and sequestrated; certain never to appeal to her, but hoping to turn her fear into love… How absurd! And when the beauty left, once she has seen how ugly his heart and his face were, he took his revenge!

When she finally reached the Lake House, Evelina saw no one was there. The Phantom was probably still wandering somewhere, daydreaming, just like her. She went into her room, left the cape on the dressing table, extinguished the candle, and she sat, still pensive, on the bed. The door was still opened: she heard a knock, and she immediately knew who it was. "Please, come in", she said, without even looking at the visitor, but simply standing up. None of them felt comfortable. The young woman carefully took the cape and handed it to him with a muttered thanks, and he muttered "you're welcome". And then, there was silence. The vicomtesse de Chagny sat on the bed, still looking down, an attitude she didn't ofteen take on since her… "arrival". She felt the burning gaze of his eyes scrutinising her, and she didn't like it.

As for him, he looked at her with concern. Her complexion was much paler; her cheeks, hollowed; her eyes were blazing fantastically. Tears marked shadows under her eyes, but she was trying her best to smile, to look calm and distant, proud, as the aristocrat she indeed was. Confronted to that hidden distress, he couldn't find the right attitude to take on: every possibility seemed derisory, or unbearable. But he couldn't let her go, not after spending twenty long years planning his revenge, not after Christine's and her husband's betrayal, could he? But he couldn't resign to see the woman he still wanted to marry decay. He realised his feelings were going to betray him once again, even if she always told him he had no heart!

"You are unhappy… aren't you?" he hesitantly asked, eventually. The first answer she gave him was a bitter laugh. How well he knew that laugh! It was so similar to his own laugh, a bitter, self-depreciating laugh, drenched in sadness! She was suffering, and her suffering caused his own pain, but he knew he would feel even worse if he let her go, even if he were certain of her happiness, there, _above the ground_.

"What a silly question…" she eventually said. "How could it have been different? You know it… How could a kidnapping and an imprisonment led to something else than hate and despise, at least coming from the victim?"

She raised her head and looked him right in the eyes. His mask wasn't covering his lips: she took the occasion to create a diversion. Wasting time on her qualms didn't please her.

"So! After all this time, you decided to show me a part of your face… Are you going to unravel it, little by little, or do you think, that showing me your lips is enough? After all, you said that _no one should see Erik's face_…" she hissed.

And this time, it was he, who laughed bitterly. Then, he left for a little while. When he came back, he was wearing only half a mask.

"Here's all you could see of Erik's face, mademoiselle de Chagny", he coldly asserted, as if he were saying that water boils at hundred degrees centigrade, or that the Earth revolves around the Sun. She looked at him with a bit of curiosity.

"I am pleased, this is enough. I can guess the look of the rest of your face."

"Could you, mademoiselle?"

"There are a lot of reasons to put a mask on a face. However, in our situation, only two possibilities are acceptable: the first one is anonymousness, because you don't want a peculiar person to see your face; the second one lies in the face itself. If you wanted to remain anonymous, you would have kept the first, full mask. But you didn't, and you showed me half of your face. If your desire is to hide half of your face from me, then I could reasonably think you fear from me, not for you. Adding this to your eternal reclusion leaves me little doubt: you are disfigured."

"I am, indeed. Quite logical, mademoiselle de Chagny. Here's another reason not to try to see my face."

_Her mother wouldn't even have thought about it. Even if she did, she took the decision to unmask me. _

As for Evelina, she found the day very interesting: now, she had weapons against him.

Another silence, broken by the Phantom:

"Let's have dinner. You spent hours, crying in the stalls."

The sentence was… so very commonplace. He offered his hand, she refused: she felt like she were Marguerite, who refused Faust's hand, but as for her, she was beautiful, and she was a lady. He pulled the seat for her, then served her gallantly, despite all the absurdity of their situation. He sat in front of her and, for the first time, ate with her. After all, he wasn't a supernatural entity. She tried to think of him, doing the dishes or cooking, between two moments where he was playing the role he assigned himself, made her smile. Indeed! There was mundane things everywhere, even under a former opera house, with a masked man. She ate a little.

"So! Mademoiselle de Chagny… Tell me, _what do you think about the visible part of my face?_"

Evelina felt it was a trap. She would have to use some kind of intellectual duplicity, to avoid hurting Erik. She looked at him a little closer: he clearly didn't look artless, the Phantom of the Opera. His solitude did not avoid the aging: he seemed to be in his fifties. The colour of his muddy, indefinable, eyes hesitated between grey, green and brown; in his tired gaze, hate and despair were still raging. Nevertheless, she guessed he once had been handsome, before hopelessness and pain hollowed his face… or, at least, _the visible part of his face_, was once pleasant. Even more atrociously pleasant, for the other side was disfigured. A stroke of compassion filled her, but she didn't show it. After a little while, she answered:

"Well, I think your face is… remarkably balanced."

Again, he laughed, with pain, irony and despair.

"I also think you look like the opera house."

"So? I suppose that… living here for thirty years, including a year for its construction, helped a lot."

"You…. built the opera house?"

"Indeed, I was one of the contractors."

"… Excuse me?"

"Back in 1872, after the Commune, when the construction of the opera house started again, Charles Garnier – the architect – was looking for collaborators. I offered him my help, as a contractor. Then, I only had to change some of his plans, and I took advantage of the presence of the Communards' hall… "

"And… It was there, that you…?"

"No. But workers are way harder to impress than bourgeois… And, taking into account of this little inconvenient _(he sniggered again)_, the Opera and his cellars were a wonderful place to hide, don't you think so? And here's the full explanation of the Phantom of the Opera's mystery: a disfigured contractor once decided to hide, far from the world; thus, he changed some plans the architect made, and built himself a lair, where no one would even attempt to find him. The simpler the explanation, the best…"

"This is not simple at all."

He smiled enigmatically. Evelina noticed with surprise, that she found that smile handsome.

"I would like to know more…" she admitted after a short silence.

"My biography?" He sniggered again. "Does it matter?... However. I am French, I left my family when I was a boy, then I lived as an _entertainer_, and I took advantage of my travels to learn many things. Then, I had to flee again, I came back to France and I worked here, building the Opera House. I decided to live here, to enjoy music and peace, two things I missed so much. Seven years later, in 1880, I began to teach your mother to sing. And you know the rest. Now, your turn."

She had almost forgotten that, with Erik, it's a question of give and take.

"My life isn't fascinating in any way, Monsieur… I am the elder of three children, I am born in Norway in 1882, because my father was working there. Thus, I lived in Norway for six years. When my father had to come back in France, my whole family left and came to Paris. I have nothing else to say…"

"Of course, you have. Does your mother still sing?"

"Never."

"Pity! Now, her voice should be at its best…"

Another silence.

"But we will fix this, won't we? _After all, your mother won't be long…_"

And he left the table, leaving Evelina petrified with fear and hope.

_Can it be?..._

* Quick translation: _Ah! Roland! Look, Roland! Look, Roland, look at them, those eyes, brighter than the stars! _[…]_ You betrayed me, Roland! Roland, you betrayed me! Roland, you lost me! Roland! Roland! You lost me! Look at me, for the last time, alas! Kneel! Kneel! Cheater! Cheater! Curse you! Roland! Roland! Go! Curse you! _[…] _Catch her! Catch her!_

** Another quick translation: _Beautiful night, ô love night, smile upon our euphoria… Night, softer than the day, ô beautiful night of love… Time flees, and don't come back…_ (_Barcarolle_ from Offenbach's _Contes d'Hoffmann_).

*** And a last one (this time, from German into English). The young girl: _step back! Ah! step back! Go away, cruel skeleton! I'm still young, go away! And don't touch me!_ Death: _Give me your hand, you beautiful and sweet creature! I'm friendly, I won't punish you… Trust me! I'm not cruel. You need to sleep quietly in my arms…_ (Schubert, _Der Tod und das Mädchen_.)


End file.
